Something to Think About with Rev. Edward Lyons

Published:11:28Friday 19 May 2017

Before I was a Christian I was always determined to get into places for people over 18 years old in Glasgow.

We would try to dress older to pass at the door. Approaching the people on the door was tense but more often than not it was met with the line, “Sorry, not tonight lads.” That was it and we could hardly complain as no one was over 18 in our merry band. We simply did not qualify for entrance.

Jesus once told a parable about a young man who departed his father’s home and spent all he had and even when he was in the gutter he was still unwilling to go back. He could find reasons to stay away. In his eyes he no longer qualified. Yet eventually he did return. What he discovered was the love of the father was not given to him because he deserved it but because the father had more than enough love to give. He simply needed to want to go and return to the father.

We know we are not always focused on God.

Yet the Bible promises us this great experience. When we change the direction we are facing and maybe even travelling in life and return to God or even approach him for the first time, we see he is already watching us and has been from the moment we were conceived. No one sneaks up on God. We walk into his presence face to face and receive his very best.

Life now and even more hereafter.

In Jesus, God came down to earth and even below to the world of the dead to proclaim there is life in Christ alone. There was and is no depth too deep for his grace to reach and that when responded to in faith would not lift us to the heights of his heaven.

And no one who approaches him in faith ever gets told, “Not tonight lads.”